Thanks to a post over on David Pottinger’s blog, Steps & Leaps,* I was reminded of the concept of the spark file, the invention of writer Steven Johnson. As Johnson describes it, the spark file is “a single document where I keep all my hunches: ideas for articles, speeches, software features, startups, ways of framing a chapter I know I’m going to write, even whole books…. There’s no organizing principle to it, no taxonomy–just a chronological list of semi-random ideas that I’ve managed to capture before I forgot them.”
The key to the effectiveness of this exercise, according to Johnson, is periodically reading the spark file from start to finish.
“I end up seeing new connections that hadn’t occurred to me the first (or fifth) time around,” he writes. “Sure, I end up reading over many hunches that never went anywhere, but there are almost always little sparks that I’d forgotten that suddenly seem more promising. And it’s always encouraging to see the hunches that turned into fully-realized projects or even entire books.”
This is a tantalizing idea, not unlike the bullet journal in some ways. It’s a single place to record data. In the bullet journal you rapid log events, tasks and random information. In the spark file you keep ideas that you don’t want to forget, at least not now. To get the most out of either system, you need to review the contents on a regular basis, the bullet journal probably more frequently than the spark file.
But there are also crucial differences in the two systems. In a bullet journal it isn’t so much the expression of the information, but the information itself. You bought book Z at your local bookstore on February 3. You completed Y project on March 12. That kind of thing. With a spark file, it seems to me, the expression of the idea is almost as important as the idea itself. Or, to put this another way, recording the idea will instant start to change the idea, and you will want room to be able to explore those changes. It might take two sentences, it might take a whole page. And when you review your ideas months later you will want to be able to append thoughts about that idea.
While a bullet journal could serve as the staging point for a spark file, where you make a quick note of something you want to write down in more detail later, you likely would never move information from the spark file to your bullet journal, unless it was a note to follow-up on an idea.
Johnson says his current spark file is over 50 pages (as of two years ago). So the spark file needs to be able to grow organically. I don’t flatter myself that I have that many ideas floating around in my head or ever will, but do wonder if I would have more if I had a more systematic way of non-critically capturing my “hunches.” Is a spark file something that would work for me? The only way to find out, I think, is give it a go.
And that leads to the next question: What’s the best way for ME to implement this concept?
From Johnson’s description, I can see three essential attributes of an effective spark file:
- I must be able to access it for both reading and writing from anywhere, at any time.
- Capturing my thoughts and ideas must be quick and easy, because any road bumps might make me decide to check my e-mail instead of writing down that “hunch.”
- I must be able to read the entire set of hunches from start to finish in one window. But does this mean it needs to be a single document like Johnson uses? Or can it be composed in an application that provides concatenation of smaller documents into a longer one for reading?
One more essential attribute can be inferred from Johnson’s description, though he does not make it explicit. Regardless, it certainly is important to me. And that is, writing and editing needs to be easy, because I find that once I start to write down an idea from my head, that idea instantly begins to morph into something different. To allow myself the ability to explore this evolution, I have to be able to write in a nimble editor, one that makes it easy for me to re-write as I go. This may sound like a no-brainer, but it is nevertheless important for me to make this a requirement, as it will impact the tools I choose to use to keep my spark file. For example, it is one reason why a paper notebook would not work for me, as I am a terrible writer and editor with pen and paper.
As I first started thinking about creating my own spark file, I also began considering options for how to manage it. I rejected hierarchical free-form databases like DevonThink or UltraRecall because the information stored in those applications is too atomized. While those apps may work for others who want a place to store their ideas, they are not in keeping with the major principle as suggested by Steven Johnson of providing a single, readable view of all your hunches.
But does that mean only a single document will work? Not necessarily. It occurred to me that the remarkable writing application Scrivener, could be an ideal environment for keeping a record of hunches. As I envision it, I would create a spark file project and then add individual documents for each “hunch.” There are a lot of reasons Scrivener would be an excellent application to use for this purpose:
- It’s a great writing environment, in which it is easy to compose and edit text.
- There are many ways to add meta data to your hunches, if you want to do so. The date you create an entry is automatically recorded for instance. You can also add a synopsis, or annotations, and lots more. That seems useful.
- You can easily export your entire spark file as a single document in many standard formats, so you are not locked in to Scrivener, and you can make your spark file portable.
- You can use the scrivenings view, which concatenates your entries into a single window that is virtually indistinguishable from a single document.
- You can save your spark file project in Dropbox so it is accessible on all your computers. Scrivener is available for both the Mac and Windows platforms.
- If you want to add information to any of the hunches in your spark file, you can either append them to the original document or add supporting documents, which can appear as sub-documents to the original.
- If an idea looks like it will blossom, you can easily move it to its own Scrivener file, where you can focus on nurturing it.
There are, of course, a few reasons why Scrivener might not be a good choice for maintaining a spark file. First, there is no current version for mobile apps. While this may be easily overcome using a quick note capture app with easy import into a Scrivener file, it does add a layer of complexity that works against the whole concept of ease and speed. The good news is that an iPad version of Scrivener is in the works and should be available soon.
A bigger issue for me is that in order to share a file among computers via Dropbox, you need to get into the habit of closing the file once you are done with it, as having the same file open on more than one computer currently can create problems. This, in fact, is the issue that has made me decide that Scrivener won’t work for me at this time. I know myself, and if I have to re-open a file in order to record a half-baked idea, I’m probably going to check my Twitter feed first and then… what was that idea again?
So I’m back to square one, which is doing just what Johnson does and having a single document. I can keep it in Dropbox for access from any of my devices. It should be in a standard format. Plain text or a Word document. I’m inclined to choose plain text, as there are more good options on the iPad for opening and editing that format. Okay. Now that I have limited my options to this, it is time to start my spark file and let the genius begin. Or something like that.
And maybe one day Scrivener will solve the problem of synchronizing among various computers using Dropbox.
*Please forgive the incestuousness of my referring to a blog post that refers to one of my blog posts; that’s how I was made aware of it in the first place.
